


The Future Freaks Me Out

by Harukami



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-11
Updated: 2007-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <br/><p>So sometimes I. Think about the end of DDS2. And I <i>know</i> that I shouldn't do that. <i>I recognize that it's a bad idea.</i></p><p>But then I do and now I'm going to <i>make you think about it too</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future Freaks Me Out

The universe spins out around _that_ in slow time where forever takes an instant and a moment is infinity. Seraph tastes the stars; Seraph tastes the void and space, tastes earth and humanity on the air, and Seraph says _You see, I do not want to to leave them alone. They're so close to understanding._

 _Close and far_ agrees Schroedinger, who is also Seraph and neither of them as well. _Shall we live out another life alongside them, then, passing ourselves as humans and blind to meaning?_

 _Oh_ Seraph says, and around Seraph dream and reality spin out together in an interlocked spiral. _**Can** we?_

********

"Fred," young Cielo asked Fred one day, when he was around twelve years old. "How are babies made? Where are our parents?"

"Well, Cielo," Fred said. "I found you all in lotus blossom pods which had blossomed in the basement of the Lokapala base on the day the sun went back to normal."

Cielo's nose wrinkled. "Is dat some kinda euphemism?"

"No, actually."

Slowly, the little boy nodded, expression still very confused. "An', you told us the story about our namesakes... a few times... but there's someting I been wondering."

"Yes, Cielo?"

"Where's Roland?"

"Well," Fred said. "Raising a group of children who were apparently the tribe of AI cannibals who'd helped take care of me was pretty weird, but raising my old father figure would just be bizarre."

"So..."

"I'm sure," Fred said, "the orphanage is taking good care of him."

********

"Thank you so much for visiting him again," the head of the orphanage told the pair of children, a little boy and girl, who were known to come by now and then. "I honestly don't know what to do with him!"

"Is there a problem?" the little girl asked in her cute lisping voice.

"Well... I'm not sure it's appropriate to say," the head said, and sighed. "See for yourself."

Serph and Sera headed up to the stairs to the boys dorm, where they found the young boy sitting on his bed crying, surrounded by whiskey bottles.

"Nobody loves me," he told Sera, sadly.

He'd been so close to understanding, truly understanding, the true nature of karma. She held out a hand. "Roland," she said. "Do you need an intervention?"

********

"Fred? Fred? Earth to Fred?" News that Sera and Serph had brought Roland back with them for a visit seemed to have made Fred have a fit again.

Jenna sighed, watching Fred stare of into space. Fred tried really hard, after all, and he usually seemed remarkably healthy for a man whose definitive childhood experiences seemed to involve cannibalistic demons eating their way across the countryside, even if he was a bit obsessed, with the dressing them up and naming them after their predecessors. But... sometimes he had these _problems_.

"Come along, Fred," Jenna told him, and steered him towards his bed. "You should take a seat."

"Their world was hell," Fred told her vaguely. "They lived through a true hell worse than any we can ever understand--"

"That's nice, Fred," Jenna said kindly. She sat him down, then came out to the main room and smoothed down her skirt, looking at the row of anxious faces in front of her. "Fred is having a flashback again," she said. "We'll have sandwiches for dinner tonight, okay?"

*********

"You really grew up all alone in the orphanage?" Argilla asked Roland, inching closer. "That's terrible!"

Roland smoothed his hair back. "I know," he said, very seriously. "But, you know. I could handle it."

"You're pretty cool, you know," Argilla said, and winked.

"Oh, I know," he said, and blanched in embarrassment. His voice was breaking again.

*********

By the time Heat was fourteen, he had to admit he had a problem.

On the one hand, he loved Sera. Sera was beautiful, perfect in every way, gentle, kind, thoughtful... but Sera loved Serph.

Serph, on the other hand, was endlessly frustrating. Androgynous, sympathetic, someone he just couldn't help but like and it pissed him off.

He wanted both of them.

Eventually, he decided to confess, to Sera, at least. It came out in an awkward, thick-voiced, snarled grumble that included too much information on needing her and an "I know you like Serph but I do too so that's okay!"

"Well," Sera said. "For what it's worth, he and I are the same person."

"--what?"

"Deep down, all people are one," Sera said. "It's very simple. Even you and I will eventually be one."

"Really?" Heat asked, hopefully.

Sera beamed at him. "Keep working towards enlightenment," she said. "When you understand the true nature of the universe, then we will be one."

All Heat really got out of this was that he wasn't going to get laid any time soon.

*********

"Hey, Fred," Cielo said, when he was about fifteen. "I keep hearin' straaaange noises from Jenna's room at night. What's up wit dat?"

"Strange noises?" Fred asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Gale goes in to discuss some things with her, ja?"

"...yeah...?"

"Den I hear all this low-voiced talkin', and she gets to groaning, and den--"

Fred put a hand to his face. "Oh no," he said. Of course, they'd have their karma to work through. Of course, the nature of the universe was to repeat events until an individual could understand their essence.

In retrospect, raising them as siblings had probably been a terrible idea.


End file.
